Sunday, July 3, 2016

Viking Vibes and Mars Memories: Viking Forty Years Later, Part One

From NASA: "Taken by the Viking 1 lander shortly after it touched down on Mars, this
image is the first photograph ever taken from the surface of Mars. It
was taken on July 20, 1976." Image Credit: NASA

“Time and time again I repeat, ‘It’s incredible.’ And it
truly is. Nothing before or after can compare. It is transparent,
brilliant, boundless. An explorer would understand. We have stood on
the surface of Mars.” - The late Thomas A. “Tim” Mutch, leader
of the Viking Lander Imaging Team, discussing his reaction upon
seeing Viking 1’s first image

I can’t speak for others, but for me, the Viking program had the
biggest cultural impact on how I viewed planetary spaceflight. While
the Viking landers weren’t able to rove beyond their landing sites,
and couldn’t take cool “selfies” upon the Martian surface, the
images from school science books and the January 1977 issue of
National Geographic forever
made an impact on my mind: something from Earth had made it to a
neighboring planet, landed
successfully, and made its
home there permanently. Along
with the two Voyagers
and ESA’s Giotto, the Vikings fired my imagination, making it seem
as if the
Solar System was wholly explorable. And of course, in the last few
decades, countless spacecraft have proven science
fiction to be science fact.More recently, spacecraft
such as ESA’s Rosetta and NASA’s New Horizons have conducted
surveys of two seemingly impossible-to-reach worlds
(respectively, Comet 67P and Pluto).

I don’t
think I became aware until well into adulthood that the Viking
program was the grandest planetary exploration mission of its time.
While the two Viking spacecraft (which consisted of the landers,
and orbiters) were lofted
into space by Titan IIIE/Centaur launch vehicles, they were
originally destined for launch vehicles more synonymous with names
such as Apollo and Skylab. In
addition, the debate concerning whether if the program discovered “life”
on Mars still resumes to this day. I
also feel other pre-Viking Mars’ missions are largely forgotten, or
glossed over.

This is the first
of a series of blog poststhat will discuss
lesser-known facts about the Vikings, as this month marks the 40th
anniversary of Viking 1’s successful landing upon the Red Planet’s
Chryse Planitia on July 20th,
1976. (On September 3rd
that year, Viking 2 landed at Utopia Planitia; according to National
Geographic, it “landed
tipsily, one leg up on a boulder, facing a jumble of volcanic
rocks.”)

The
Viking/Saturn V Connection? An
excellent 1978 NASA publication, The Martian Landscape,
written largely by Tim Mutch,
discussed Viking’s
origins. Mutch stated that the Viking mission was defined by NASA in
1968, but it had a
predecessor possessing a name that would become familiar to
space buffs much later.

Mutch wrote, “[Viking’s]
predecessor, Voyager [not to be confused with the later two
spacecraft launched in 1977],
never passed beyond the talking stage. Starting in 1965 and
continuing through 1967, tentative plans had been developed for an
integrated long-term program of Martian exploration involving, first,
flyby and orbiter missions, and then a series of lander missions in
1973, 1975, and 1977.”

Then Mutch drops one of the most superbadass
sentences in spaceflight
history: “Each of these
Voyager missions was to be launched by a giant Saturn V rocket.
Successive missions were to contain increasingly sophisticated
scientific equipment, culminating in a 90- to 450-kg biological
laboratory in the 1977 Voyager spacecraft.” Can you imagine
ambitious Mars missions lofted by the mighty Saturn V? That would be
almost too cool to endure.

As it turns out, it was WAY
too cool to endure. Mutch
explained that these missions were bandied about during the “heyday
of Apollo when unlimited budgets were projected far into the future.”
During this time, NASA also
proposed human-helmed missions to Venus, among other lofty ideas. The
Voyager Mars
program, as stated earlier, never made it past talks, having been
scuttled by late 1960s budget cuts.

Another idea to plant a “hard
lander” upon Mars’ surface was discussed, but “[i]t was
recognized that the mission lacked both scientific merit and
exploratory excitement,” Mutch stated bluntly.Some of Voyager
Mars’ objectives continued
with Viking, which, too, felt the sting of budget cuts. One of its
biology instruments, Dr. Wolf Vishniac’s “Wolf Trap,” fell victim to such cuts in 1972.
Vishniac had been working on
versions of this instrument since 1959 for possible future planetary
missions.

Funding also affected its launch
date. Slated for launch
originally in 1973, the first Viking didn’t leave the planet until
August 20, 1975 (launch
opportunities to Mars are most favorable every 26 Earth months).
While it didn’t leave on a
Saturn V (the last Saturn V launch lofted Skylab, America’s first
space station, into orbit in
May 1973), the Titan
IIIE/Centaur was still a pretty magnificent-looking
launch vehicle.

From NASA: "On August 20, 1975, Viking 1 was launched by a Titan/Centaur rocket from
Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:22 p.m.
EDT to begin a half-billion mile, 11-month journey through space to
explore Mars. The 4-ton spacecraft went into orbit around the red planet
in mid-1976." Photo Credit: NASA

But what happened with the name
Voyager? Another program under development during the 1970s,
featuring twin spacecraft, possessed the unwieldy sobriquet of
Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977 (MJS ‘77 for short). What was the
program renamed? Voyager. And, as they say, the rest is history…

3.
Gore, R. (1977, January). Sifting for Life in the Sands of Mars.
National Geographic, 151(1),
3-31.

From NASA: "Viking 1 Lander image of a martian sunset over Chryse Planitia.
In this image the sun is two degrees below the local horizon.
The banding in the sky is an artifact produced by the incremental
brightness levels of the camera. This image was taken on the
30th Martian day (sol) after touchdown, at 19:13 local time.
The camera is pointing towards the southwest." Image Credit: NASA